


Tropes

by timetobegin



Category: Kaleidotrope (Podcast)
Genre: Tropes, i basically started thinking about who hurt my boy Drew and this happened, tw: abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetobegin/pseuds/timetobegin
Summary: Harrison loved tropes. That was why, once he heard about Sidlesmith, he set his heart on going there. He imagined it as a perfect place where everyone got their happy ending somehow, because the world was just a little kinder and more magical in Stonybrook.--Drew hated tropes. He hadn’t realized just how much he hated them until he came to Sidlesmith. Well, he’d realized, but he hadn’t realized there was a single word that could encompass everything he hated about clichés that trapped you in their jaws and then spat you back out.





	Tropes

Harrison _loved_ tropes. Not that he’d ever been in one, but still. He liked nothing better than curling up with an amazing, cheesy romcom and a box of cookies. That was why, once he heard about Sidlesmith, he'd set his heart on going there. He imagined it as a perfect place where everyone got their happy ending somehow, because the world was just a little kinder and more magical in Stonybrook.

 

His first day on campus, he saw two girls run headlong into each other because they were nose deep in their welcome packets and weren’t watching where they were going. They blushed and stammered as they helped one another capture papers before they flew away on the wind, and they’d ended up walking together to Kishi’s. By random chance Harrison spotted them a couple weeks later making out under the statue of Harriet Sidlewood and Henrik Coopersmith that marked the center of campus. He’d been hoping for his own meet cute on day one, but he was having a great time watching his favorite movies come to life.

 

Then there’d been the apartment building he’d moved into sophomore year. There had been some kind of mix-up with the furniture delivery for the people living across from him. He’d heard one of them complaining on the phone about not being able to sleep without a mattress or couches. The other roommate had quietly, awkwardly offered their own bed for the night. They’d walked out the door the next morning holding hands.

 

He’d also had the (bad or good) luck of being put in the recitation section with two of the top students in his department, who happened to hate one another and disagreed about almost everything. Every week, for an hour, the two would shout at one another about the significance of Foucault’s biopower, or something. He knew it was only a matter of time until the trope worked its power, but he was pretty sure everyone in the section up to and including the TA breathed a sigh of relief when they went from shouting to awkward politeness to having their tongues down one another’s throats before class started.

 

The thing was, tropes always seemed to happen to other people, and Harrison delighted in them all while hoping behind his shining smile that he’d get his chance soon.

 

* * *

 

Drew _hated_ tropes. He hadn’t realized just how much he hated them until he came to Sidlesmith. Well, he’d realized, but he hadn’t realized there was a single word that could encompass everything he hated about clichés that trapped you in their jaws and then spat you back out.

 

The problem was, tropes never worked out the way you thought they would. Take the Coffee Shop AU. He’d worked at a cafe when he was seventeen to give him some pocket money and help save for university. There had been a boy who’d come in every Saturday to do homework, and what started with heated glances escalated to flirting and then to making out behind the shop when Drew was on break. Drew had thought it was real, but every time he’d tried to make plans outside of that one day a week, he would get shut down. It took three weeks until Drew finally ended it. The boy had shrugged and continued to come in every Saturday to do work. Eventually he started coming in with another boy. They’d held hands under the table white studying, and Drew eventually asked to switch his workday from Saturday to Sunday.

 

Fake dating wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, either. One of his (former) best friends had once asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend at a party to make an ex jealous. Only one party turned into two turned into “let’s just hold hands in the hallways, too, just in case he’s looking” and before he knew it he had all these _feelings_ that he’d never had for a girl before. He thought she’d felt it too, because there were moments where no one was around where she’d keep holding his hand or leaning into his shoulder, and there were these _looks_ she gave him that had to have been real, but after about a month she finally got her good for nothing ex to make out with her again, and she’d dropped Drew with little more than a thank you for his participation.

 

It should probably go without saying that dubcon and abuse were also way less romantic in real life. Sure, it started out great with you feeling special that he’d want to talk to you, to kiss you, to date you, over all the other guys he could clearly get with. There were picnics in fields at sunset and holding hands in the back of theaters and truly mindblowing sex. Drew made sure to brush off the comments about his writing; he was just being a good constructive critic. Whenever he made fun of Drew’s tendency to sit and observe at parties over playing stupid games, it was just playful banter. Whenever they had a fight that escalated to shouting that inevitably ended in sex that left Drew feeling empty rather than whole, he told himself that they’d talk properly in the morning. Only the morning never came until one day it did, and it left Drew sobbing into his pillow for two days and unable to smile for two months.

 

The part of him that was still a hopeless romantic did kind of love Sidlesmith for all its cheesiness. People fell for one another left and right, and he had a good time watching it happen. But the cold, practical part of him resented that they all felt like they _had_ to fall into tropes, that they had no choice but to play out the stupid fantasy just because their hands brushed while reaching for the same library book.

 

He was determined to be smarter than that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I wrote something not crazy fluffy! Mostly I just made myself sad. But I hope you liked it? 
> 
> I think I'm going to turn this into a series of sorts, partly because this fandom needs more fic, partly because I'm still obsessed with these losers, and partly because I think it would be interesting. 
> 
> Thanks, as ever, to the glorious Balthazar, for their comments and support and shit sociology students say.


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